Ascension
by Sanis
Summary: “I see,” she said pointedly. She looked him over, he did not look that much different from the day she met him. “I still don’t like what you’re insinuating, Alucard.” AxI It's unedited, but I'm lazy, and there you have it, so flame me.


And it was finished. He was gone. It should have been raining instead the sun was out, glaring and bright. It made the whole situation seem ironic. The sun had no place here, this was a world of storms and deceiving calms before bloody tornados. This was the day of her assertion. She was the leader the world needed to guard it from the darkest tints of shadow that threatened to claim the delicate balance.

Today was the day he was put into the last place he would ever sleep, until Revelations came to pass and he would be brought to his judgment before the lord, for the sins he had committed for his God and country.

"I hope he burns in the agonizing pits of hell until his skin melts off of his bones and the devil uses him for kindling," whispered a pale blond girl, to no one in particular, "And then I hope he's resurrected and they repeat the whole thing over and over until the rest of time."

She stood a stoic vision against a serene looking garden. The hole in front of her held her adapt attention. She did not look away, nor did any stray emotion pass her constant features. This was to be her end one day as well, here in the family plot. She would lie here next to her generation's blood. This was to be her fate, her ultimate goal.

"Ah, my dear little creature," said a tall man behind her "Is it not the way of the righteous to judge not, lest they be judged?"

The tall slender female turned to look at him with eyes that once held laughter and mirth, but now held only a cold ambition for the future.

"I am not righteous," she said to him. "I don't need to be, I am Hellsing, which is enough."

He let a smile slip over his features. "Spoken like a true descendent," he told her knowingly. "I hope this fearless resolve will not leave you after your heart has once again mended itself."

She turned around quickly and looked at him. "And what would you know of hearts?" she seethed. "Besides, you ungrateful cretin, for what reason would I need the heart you speak of? There is no such thing."

He looked to the horizon, another storm was swiftly approaching, he would need to take shelter before he was exposed, this thunder and lightening was of a very serious nature.

"Do you not believe in true love?" he asked her retreating form as she made her way back inside to the place she called home. His voice was mocking, but his question was earnest.

"True love," she spoke over her shoulder, "is a farce. There is no one person for any other person. 'Love' is circumstantial, based solely on the participants desire to make an effort to believe there is love between them. They think, therefore they know. Really, it's the greatest ruse of all time."

He stopped walking momentarily and watched her body move as she marched up the stairs to the front entry way. What an interesting theory.

"Have you ever felt love?" he asked her, too gently for his nature. "Don't you think your father loved you?"

She paused in front of him and turned around to glare at him.

"Don't play games like that with me," she told him sternly. "My father's affection for me could be described as a great fondness based for primal instinct, nothing more, that's all any two people can share, a mutual primal instinct."

He rolled his eyes as she began walking again.

"Aright, it's instinct that binds people to others, and it has been called love. This proves your theory, not disregards it."

She continued walking down the hallway that would lead her to the stairs up to her new rooms where she would protect the world from it's self.

"On the contrary, it is proven," she countered patiently to him. "The concept of love is brought on from a belief that the heart directs one member of society to another, tat it fits into some form of relationship that fate has pre-determined, usually these two individuals wind up calling themselves soul mates in their ignorant haze."

"And are they not?" he asked. "Is it so horrible to assume that one person belongs to someone else for the duration of their time together?"

She snorted as she started climbing the stairs.

"What?" he asked. "What amuses you?"

"If that logic were true then you would be my soul mate, do you not belong to me? Is there anyone in this world to whom you are more dedicated?"

He had no response for her laughter.

"Think, you silly creature. People are constantly claiming that their hearts guide them. It's beyond reason that their hearts tell them anything. A heart is an organ designed to pump blood through one's body and supply oxygen to the muscle and tissue matter, it has little to nothing to do with common mating rituals."

He followed her as she finished climbing the stairs and entered a new hallway.

"I believe I may have been a negative influence on you," he told her softly. "Let it not be said that I led you to these unfounded conclusions."

She stopped in front of a door leading into her private quarters, apparently not able to find her keys to the room she kept locked at all times, she started searching herself.

"I can't believe you of all people would fight me on this," she told him. "Honestly, if anyone were to disregard the presence of such a silly notion, I would have assumed it to be someone as, well, you know."

He watched her struggling and wanted more answers.

"No I don't know," he told her plainly, his voice dry.

She did not miss his tone. She stopped what she was doing and raised her head to look him in the eye. It seemed that he was not satisfied with her opinion.

"I never would have guessed that a monster such as you could believe in little girls fantasies," she looked him up and down, as no one else would dare. "I can't believe that you would behave like such a child, Alucard."

It was the first time she said his name since they first mer.. It struck a chord with him when he heard his word from her mouth.

"I am no child," he told her, very aware he was probably going to be punished for what he was about to say. "If anyone is behaving like a child, it is you, ignoring what lies blatantly in front of you."

Her cold eyes turned to him once again. She was in no mood to be reckoned with today.

"I fail to find the underlying meaning in your words, was I meant to?" she asked, doing a fair impression of him. "Or was that some awesome tidbit of information that you feel the need to impart on me after hundreds of years of existence?"

She turned back around, ignoring his reaction to her statement. She had found her key and was now unlocking the door that would lead her to a pair on comfortable clothes instead of the dreary black getup she was currently clad in.

"I was merely stating," he said through gritted teeth, "that only the blind miss out on the beauty of color."

"How surprising," she said nonchalantly. "After all these years of bickering I've finally found what sets you off, I must say this is unexpected, maybe I'll stop shooting you in favor of it."

She briskly walked into the room that had housed her since her father's death. He was still following her, which she found suspicious, usually he at least granted her privacy when changing her attire. (By privacy she meant he went somewhere else where he could see her just as well as he wanted and let her have the illusion she was alone, in truth they both knew of the others trickery, but neither one seemed to want to confront the opposite party regarding the situation.)

He watched her go to her rather large closet and pull out a traditional navy suit. He remembered when he talked to her of appearing more masculine, for the sake of retaining equal footing with her 'peers,' it had been interesting to tell a nineteen year old that she needed to look less attractive if she wanted a greater success rate. He had taught her how to tie her tie, to this day they both did it the same way.

He went over, sat in a chair facing the room and fireplace, and watched her dig around her room looking for a clean pair of stockings. Really, she was nearly perfect, just a few flaws, and he was beginning to become fond of them as well.

"Do you really think me a child for what I have become," he asked her as she lifted her shirt over her head to put on a different shirt.

She slipped it on and looked at him. What was he up to now? Had she not proven her point?

"Everything I have done in the time I have been present on this earth has been dedicated to some form of love, as ridiculous as it sounds," he sounded sappy and he knew it, but it had to be said. "Love is not a beautiful thing, it's a cold heartless device that breaks men and women. It leaves a person with nothing or everything, it creates dedication or despair, and there is nothing childish about it. It's only to those who misunderstand it's true meaning that disregard it's power."

She growled at him.

"I sincerely hope you are not calling me uneducated, Alucard."

She was serious. That was the second time she said his name in twenty minutes.

"If the shoe fits," he began, looking over at where she stood, with her pants hanging loosely about her hips, her zipper yet to be done up.

She continued dressing in silence, casting a watchful eye on her servant. It was not often that Integra Hellsing refrained from snapping back with a witty response to an accusation, but it was rarer yet that the great undead beast mentioned his marred and blurry past.

She walked over to the resting area where he sat and poured herself a glass of some amber colored liquid or another.

"Alright," she said, sitting down in the chair opposite of him. "You have my attention."

"Why have you not married Integra? Why do you not secure a man to provide you with a heir to the Hellsing line?"

The question was out of the blue, and she didn't see how it fit the situationn, but she played along anyway, curious as to where he was going with all of this.

"I haven't yet found a man worth the aggravation," she stated simply.

He laughed.

"You never will, and what's worse is you know it," he told her. "So why put off the inevitable? It's not in your nature, Master."

"It's a matter of convenience," she said, suddenly uncomfortable for reasons she couldn't place.

He said nothing.

Neither did she.

They sat for awhile, uncomfortable and comfortable in the quiet, it was a familiar silence between them.

"Did it ever occur to you," he asked almost angrily, but with a trademark sarcasm, "that you may be _wrong_?"

She looked at him for a moment…

"No," she replied. "Did the thing ever occur to you?'

"Once," he said dryly.

"I see," she said pointedly. She looked him over, he didn't look that much different from the day she met him. "I still don't like what you're insinuating, Alucard."

"What am I insinuating?" he asked, making sure they were on the same page.

She glared at him; this was not her idea of a wonderful pastime.

"_I _felt," she stated, "that you were implying that I have somehow come to an ignorant hypothesis, like a sort of spoiled rug rat. It sounded like you were calling me uncultured, that I made an assumption by jumping to a conclusion, and that I was not properly utilizing a highly obtainable power source. Am I wrong?"

He sighed. She glared.

"Master, you are truly a Renaissance woman, and your conclusions were not half concluded or lightly taken, I didn't think you sounded spoiled or uncultured. But this thing people call," he made a scrunched up face "love….is very valuable asset. You have not properly learned to lo-"

"Do not tell me I have never been loved!" she declared. "You yourself admitted my father's affection of me-"

"If you would listen to me, instead of jumping to conclusions then you would know that I was not accusing you of never having been loved, but never loved anyone else in return. You can receive Integra, but you are incapable of doing that act yourself, you just don't know how. You're corrupt, you've been broken by life and I don't know if you can be fixed."

She was not accustomed to outbursts from him, so she replied by fighting fire with fire.

"And you?" she asked, rage apparent in her voice. "How does this relate back to you and your past? So what if it does, you're exactly what I hate! Why would anyone want to be like you-"

"I am a product of what I have been made by others!" he said calmly, standing up "We all are, every creature on this earth is only the product of those who have molded it.""We are molded by our own doinf Alucard! We are not fate's whore's! We make our own decisions and have control over our own actions! God gave freewill, to do as we see fit-"

"- God makes a mockery of us all, he is there to give us freewill to influence others, and shape them as we have been shaped! His mercy is bittersweet and his love a cruel mistress, which you can not understand because you don not understand love, Integra!"

They were both standing up, they looked remarkably similar, both stood erect, summoning all the height they could muster to their lanky frames. Integra, however, had hr chest sticking out, as if trying to impose power, and Alucard had his face cast down as if trying to placate an impossible obstacle.

Integra did not know what to say at his last piece of logic.

"You acknowledge there is a God, Alucard?" she asked, slightly dumbfounded, her body starting to un tense.

She looked at her like a wounded kitten and fell back into his seat.

"Someone has to apologize, don't they," he asked, turned away.

She starred at him a moment, not sure what to say.

"What has life done to you?" she asked, kneeling next to him. "Tell me of the cruelties and short comings to you, and I'll take that knowledge and learn how to use it Alucard."

And so he began. He told her all he could remember from every moment he could bear remembering. He told her all the good, all the bad, al the mixed blessings. He told her about wars and old flames. He talked about practically ancient times to areas of history she'd never even heard of, let alone read about. He talked and talked and talked, and she decided she liked the sound of his voice…..sometimes.

It took him a long time to finish, a long time. They were in her room for an unprecedented amount of time, looking back Integra guessed it might have been nearly two and a half days. When he was done, she didn't say a word, a hare breath whisper would break the moment,

"Do you see? Love is the driving force between everything. Love of things causes greed, love of power causes domination, love of lust causes emotion, love of fear causes thrill seeking, everything boils down to this one thing, and you can never get around it, I know, I tried once."

"Are we so different?" she asked him. "Do we really stand at such opposite sides of the spectrum?"

They were splayed on the floor. He was allowing her to rest against his arm, and they brought comfort to each other, that neither that the other acknowledged.

"I imagine it's all relative my Master," he murmured in amazingly commanding tone.

"Hmmm," she agreed. "Think of all the rumors that will be flying around after we immerge. It's bad enough everyone thinks we're having some sort of sordid affair, of which I have no idea where the rumors started. This will only add fuel to the fire."

"Oh, Walter started those," he told her her, a smile playing about his lips. "He thought it was amusing, he always did have a odd sense of humor, that one. I think it's why we got on so brilliantly."

"…you know, they say all rumors spring from a grain of truth."

He looked at her suspiciously.

"I hope that's not you're way of saying you want to shack –up," he told her. " Because I except to be wooed by any interested parties, non of this beating around the bush nonsense."

She snorted.

"Don't be so conceited, I was just curious to see if there was any relevance there, on your end."

He sat up, and Integra nearly hit the floor. A wide grin covered his features.

"Is that your way of asking if I care for you?" he asked, convinced he had the upper hand. He looked her in the face, studying what he could only read. "It is! Oh bathe me in holy water; you want to know my intentions!"

"Shut-up," she said, obviously uncomfortable. "I didn't mean it that way."

She was lying, he knew it, and she knew he knew it. It was the way they dealt with things, always an unspoken agreement, never any confirmation.

"I finally understand why the Ice Queen wouldn't love," he exclaimed. "Not because she could not, but because she refused to acknowledge her feelings for what she thought was impossible!"

He leaned over to whisper in her ear "God favors those who take pity on the less fortunate," he told her. "You can just right me off as a charity case, I don't mind, not for what I'll get in return."

"Stop it," she said. He'd never seen her blush before. "This absurd, I said no such thing-"

"You're living in denial," he told her smugly. "You won't be able to resist after awhile, I am _temptation_."

He stood up and started doing some sort of awful dance.

"I am a vampire," he sang. "You want my body!"

If it hadn't been so humiliating, she might have laughed. Instead she watched as he winked at her and started unbuttoning his shirt.

"You," she said, "are a fool."

He snickered.

"Oh come on," he pushed. "Dance around the room naked with me."  
"Absolutely not," she told him sternly. "I have dignity."

Apparently his comment didn't really make him want to stop dancing around, in the process of getting naked. She watched him gallivanting around until she had too look away.

She decided it would be a good time for another glass of whisky.

She watched him out of the corner of her eye, and decided to ignore the pose he decided to take on the bed.

"I suppose you've done this before," she said, acknowledging his body's artful, if somewhat obscene position.

"Oh, not for just anyone," he said.

"I'm not sleeping with you," she retorted.

"I know," he answered back. "I just want you to know what you're missing out on."

She walked over to pick up his shirt and threw it to him on the bed. She watched as he grinned at her, again, and put it back on. It was against her better judgement when she went over and climbed up next to him, wanting the comfort of another again.

She pushed him over and smacked him with a pillow when he wouldn't share.

Suddenly everything felt serious again.

"There is no place for us in this world," she said softly. "We must never let this happen again."

"What," he asked. "We must never be happy again? We must never laugh or have a good time again? We must never enjoy each other's company?"

:"I owe my life to Hellsing," she said. "It is enough."

"You silly girl," he whispered in her hair. "I am Hellsing."

"Hoe did you figure that, Alucard?" she asked, weary of games.

"Without me there would be no Hellsing. I made this organization. Without me you would be some pregnant house wife who would sometime laugh at dinner parties about your great great great grandfather who would sometimes go around thinking he could vampires say vampires out of senility," he told her amused. "Besides, didn't I raise you? Wasn't it I that taught you how to think on your feet, how to outwit your enemy, how to find the weaknesses of others? Didn't I teach you how to shoot a gun and deal with members of the convention when they got out of hand? Didn't I improve you Integra? You are who you are, because of me."

"Walter helped," Integra replied in a small voice.

"Walter helped," acknowledged Alucard. "However Walter is dead, we just buried him Integra."

She said nothing.

"You can't blame him because he died," he told her. "It's not right, hating him for what he had not control over. He loved you Integra, and he wouldn't want you to despise him because he could no longer be there to make your tea."

"He was the only person left who I knew before-" she stopped as if about to say something else. "Just before."

"I know," he told her.

"He took care of me," she said defensively. "He did my godamn laundry!"

"He liked doing it," he confided. .

"I wasn't ready to let him go," she said in a voice that didn't sound like it belonged to her.

"We are never ready to let them go," he said calmly.

"There is no one left, Alucard," she said, trying to make him understand. "I don't know how to remember who I am, who is Integra Hellsing, and who is the Royal protestant knight, defender of the common man. Who will tell me which one is which now?"

"You could tell me the difference and I'll let you know which is which," he mumbled into her hair.

"I already told you," she said, pulling away. "I owe my life-"

"Bullshit," he said, pulling her back.

She did not try to fight him again. It just was not worth it.

"Live your life for Hellsing," he told her. "Then, when you're done with that, come live another life with me."

"I can't," she said.

"You can," he stated firmly, forcing her to look at him. "You can and you must. I demand it of you. You owe everything you are to me, that is a life debt, Integra. I'll have you pay it."

"How cruel," she said. "What a metaphorical rape."

"I'm giving you what you want and you know it."

They sat like that.

"I love you too."

There was a long pause, and a deep sigh.

"Not yet, wait for it."

And that was how it was. An acknowledged agreement between the two. It was the last time before she died that they ever slept in the same bed, and it would be another sixty years before those words were ever uttered from either one of those lips again. It was a long road home, but the journey was worth the trip. The last great love story this world would ever know.


End file.
